The challenge here in GCC is that not all companies have either busienss continuity or resilience strategies let alone plans and if they do they have them they have always been tested out, tweaked, amended or shared!
Working for an employer is a complete contrats to and from working with an empoyer or working for yourself, there is a very differen mindset which requires tremendous reosurcefulness, resilience, mental toughness and emotional intelligence along witht he ability to put struture in your day. It is one thing to work from home and be alone with a designated ‘home’ office compared to working in a bedspace or sharing the kicthen table! Dressing for work is something that requires more thought than just putiing toegther your upper body! And this is in its self fraught with potential for errors of judgement, timing and movement when in virtual meetings as was demonstrated by a Spanish news announcer earleur in the year.
Performance has by all accounts that I have heard not been impacted, if anything it has been enhanced during the ‘lock down’ and team dynamics have also benefiited as the range of bullies or the sensitivity of introverts has been rebalanced or distance has reduced impact and effect positively in more cases than the ther way around. AI and other monitoring systems if used intuitively rather than in a disciplinary manner can enhance a sens of security rather than overisght! Employees are adults when they enter the world of employment and that recogntion has been returned to them with remote working, not having to ‘ clock in’ and out to measure timeliness or periods of attendance. Asking people to go back to the pre ‘lock down’ buometrics is somehting that needs time and effort to address as the employees were trusted when working remotely! Careful work with ‘re-enetry’ is essential as the extremes have had far reaching effects and impact. Most of it unseen or meansurable. Another side effect of remote working is that many have been exposed as not meeting the expectations of their employers , colleagues or customers where as others have surrised themselves as well as others and shone! Technologicakl ability and rapid learning have becoem essential to succeed and adaptability has become highly prised. It is mto so much the skill levels but the willingness to get ahnds on and take part.
In academia it has particulalry been evident, where there those who know, but are not able to transfer knowledge when not in a lecture room or class room set up, which has led to much soul searching along with re-evaluation of performance being indicated!
A byproduct of all of this is that revaluation will need to be carried out, and from there retraining, development or redeployment will need to be considered. Everything has changed and nothing is as it was and the only way forwards is to accept that and adapt with the times and contstraints and see the opportunities as there are many.
Interesting EMAAR has done away with titles, there will still be strcture but not tiltes, it is to be hoped that beusiness continuity and resielience ahve been taken ito account as this is a chanmge that will require tremendous agility and patience. Success will be seen if there are valid and relaibale measuremnts in place. A leap of faith that could make a huge difference in an enviroment that sepouses valueing its employees. ALLAH KAREEM
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